Before Australia: Historicising Russian Migration via China after World War II

In 1945, tens of thousands of Russian and Russian-speaking Jewish refugees were in China. Many had come decades earlier, following the Bolshevik revolution, the rout of anti-Bolshevik armies in 1919–20 and the White Russian defeat in Siberia in 1922. At war’s end, they became part of the large cohort of European refugees in the Far East, displaced by National Socialism and then by Communism, who urgently sought resettlement in the West. A significant number eventually came to Australia in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Yet, Russian migration to Australia via the China route is poorly understood in the historiography. This article examines Russian migration to China in the first half of the twentieth century, and their departure from China in the late 1940s and 1950s. Their trajectory was complicated first by events in China, and second, by their encounters with the international refugee agencies created by the Allies to assist those displaced by the war.     

Exploring Cambodian schoolgirls’ educational persistence: a community cultural wealth perspective

This study draws on a community cultural wealth framework to discuss how materially and socially disadvantaged girls in rural Cambodia negotiate barriers to attending secondary school. The study explored the schooling experiences of 43 secondary schoolgirls and 23 young women in higher education, using a variety of art-based activities and more traditional qualitative methods, including interviews and questionnaires. The girls’ and young women’s narratives about persisting in education revealed the agentic ways in which they drew on manifold resources in order to stay in school. We argue that strong relational ties, particularly friendships, foster Cambodian schoolgirls’ resistant identities, expanding their mobilities and possibilities for action in relation to educational persistence. We examine how supportive family members, resourceful friends, caring teachers, and knowledgeable staff from non-governmental organisations, enabled schoolgirls and young women to develop aspirations, resilience, and coping strategies that allowed them to overcome barriers to education. We consider girls’ educational persistence in relation to Yosso’s familial, social, navigational, aspirational, and resistant capitals, and identify altruistic capital as an additional resource that the girls and young women referred to when describing their schooling experiences.     

The Muslim Settlement of Late Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine: Comparison with Jewish Settlement Patterns

In the late Ottoman and Mandatory periods, Palestine's rural landscape underwent a great transformation. This study examines how the Muslim population expanded beyond its traditional inhabitation in the highlands and settled the fluid inventory of marginal lands in the coastal plains and unpopulated valleys of Palestine. In settling these marginal landscapes their settlement dovetailed with Jewish settlement patterns. While most studies have emphasized the competitive aspect of this process, examining Zionist and Arab national claims, this research points to a different aspect of this new settlement—mainly how much the Jewish and Muslim settlement patterns mirrored one another and how they were part of similar physical processes and complemented one another. Relying on censuses, aerial photographs, and period maps, as well as other archival sources, this is the first systematic research to examine the full extent of new Muslim settlements in Palestine in the late Ottoman and Mandatory periods, and to draw parallels between this phenomenon and the settlement endeavors of the Zionists.     

Pilgrimage and tourism: Cathedral visiting in contemporary England

Abstract

This paper examines the role of cathedral visiting in contemporary England. It highlights the importance of cathedrals to the tourism economy and also considers the issue of the commercialisation of heritage within cathedrals and the difficulties posed for cathedral authorities in contrasting perceptions of visitors as tourists and pilgrims. The issue of pilgrimage is examined through the results of a survey of the experiences and attitudes of eight hundred visitors to four English cathedrals. It is suggested that the tension between tourism and pilgrimage is not as great as might be expected and that experience of visiting a cathedral can engender a sense of pilgrimage in the tourist     

The ‘turn to the victim’ in Italian culture: victim-centred narratives of the anni di piombo

This article considers the emergence of a corpus of victim centred-narratives addressing the experience of political violence during the anni di piombo in the period surrounding the establishment of the ‘Day of Memory for the Victims of Terrorism’. Bringing a critical victim-studies approach to bear, it explores how the victim of terrorism is portrayed in the corpus of victim-centred narratives and asks what is claimed, effected and achieved by the corpus in cultural terms. It further explores how the perspective of survivors of terrorist attacks and of relatives of the victims reshapes the cultural imaginary of the anni di piombo in the new millennium.     

Cross-border childcare strategies of Burmese migrant workers in Thailand

In discussing the challenges of cross-border childcare faced by migrant workers, most research focuses on ‘distance mothering’, assuming that children remain in the place of origin. In contrast, this article focuses on childcare at the place of destination in the context of migrant Burmese factory workers in Thailand. Since many of these workers are ‘undocumented’, they have few rights in their place of destination. This is especially problematic in the areas of reproductive health and childcare rights. Despite such obstacles, Burmese migrant workers strive to manage their childcare responsibilities by mobilizing whatever resources are available, as well as seeking to maximize the possibilities of citizenship and education rights for their children. According to our research, the specific strategies deployed vary according to the particular location in Thailand in which migrants are working. This study analyzes three locations in Thailand – one in the central Thailand, and the other two at the borderlands between Burma and Thailand. Through a feminist analysis of the ‘care diamond’, the study demonstrates how Burmese women migrant workers utilize the different migrant labor governance systems and porous international border as resources and opportunities to develop complex and changing strategies to juggle their childcare arrangements.     

Making Headway: The Introduction of Western Civilization in Colonial Northern Nigeria

This article scrutinises attempts by the British Foreign and Colonial Office to control information in its colonies between 1946 and 1950. Several factors combined to alter the ground on which colonial officials operated in this period: an emerging ‘Cold War’ between Britain and its wartime Soviet ally, international debates about creating an enforceable catalogue of ‘human rights' and a heightened emphasis on public relations within British colonies as a strategy for imperial governance. These factors converged in the response of colonial officials to the writing of one of the most notorious anti-colonial activists in Britain at the time, George Padmore. By analysing British Colonial Office reports of Soviet propaganda in their colonies, the article suggests new analysis about some of the ways in which the rhetoric of the Cold War impacted on Britain's approach to empire after the Second World War.     

Baptism and Burial in a Gypsy Family of the Sacromonte

LES PÉTROGLYPHES DE L'ILE DE PÁQUES. By H. LAVACHERY. Vol. I: text, pp. 140; Vol. II: 80 Plates, Map and Frontispiece. De Sikkel, Antwerp, 1939. Review by Alan S. C. Ross.

ENGLAND'S DANCES by DOUGLAS KENNEDY. Bell and Sons Ltd., 1949. 7s. 6d. Review by V. A.

MANUEL DE FOLKLORE FRANÇAIS CONTEMPORAIN. By A. VAN GENNEP. Tome Ier. iv. Cérémonies Périodiques Cycliques ; 2, Cycle de Mai, La St. Jean. 19 maps. Pp. xix, 1422–2135. (1949). Paris. Editions A. &; J. Picard &; Cie., 82 Rue Bonaparte. Review by P. J. Heather.

HINDUISM. By A. C. BOUQUET. Hutchinsons University Library, London. Pp. 171. Price 7s. 6d. Review by F. Harold Smith.

Seven volumes of the Whitbread Library, 1947-8-9. Published and issued by Messrs. Whitbread and Co., London, E.C.I. Price 5s. each. Review by L. F. Newman.